Write Your Own Ticket!...Reality TV Style

As an actor who hasn’t made it yet, you often hear the following advice from those who are familiar with the long-shot odds of the entertainment business: “Write your own ticket, kid. You have to create your own work. You can’t rely on others to cast you. You have to make it happen yourself.” This is good advice. The odds of making it (if you haven’t already made it by age 20) are brutal. And the inspirational stories of the trailblazers who wrote their own ticket are familiar, if not numerous. The most famous, perhaps, is Sylvester Stallone, who, more or less broke and unknown, refused to sell his screenplay unless he was cast in the lead role in Rocky. The other well known example is Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, who supposedly pulled a similar maneuver with Good Will Hunting.

The truth about the do-it-yourself fairytale, however, is that the odds of pulling it off are about as grim as the odds of making it by pounding the pavement year after year. The actor/writer inevitably bumps up against the realities of finding financing and backing for a project without a star in the lead role, which these days is arguably even harder to do than it was in the past.

But thanks to two recent projects—one an indie movie and the other a Broadway musical—the dream of writing your own ticket lives on! Well, sort of.

I grant that the first project I’d like to mention—Baghead, a movie directed by the Duplass brothers—has not been all that successful in the marketplace. You may not have even heard of it. But it did have some measure of success. It went to Sundance and got a distribution deal with Sony Pictures Classic, no small feat. It has no stars to speak of and a small budget. And it’s a good movie, too. (Full disclosure: two of my friends, Ross Partridge and Jennifer Lafleur, each have a role in the movie, one a lead. So go see it if you haven’t already!) The plot of Baghead is as follows: after seeing an indie film made on no budget, four actor-friends sit around complaining that their careers are going nowhere and, on a whim, decide that they, too, can write a film, cast themselves in the lead roles, and shoot it with no budget. They retreat to a cabin on Big Bear Lake to write and shoot. Romance, humor, and a suspense-horror movie ensue. It’s a clever idea. The Duplass brothers have made a movie with four unknown actors and no budget about four unknown actors making a movie with no budget.

The second project I’d like to mention is called [title of show], written by and starring two unknown actors named Jeff Bowen and Hunter Bell. Stop me if this sounds familiar. It begins with four actor-friends sitting around complaining that their careers are going nowhere and, on a whim, they decide to write a musical, cast themselves in the lead roles, and produce it with no budget. Both the show as well as the show within the show start out with an off-off broadway run and make it all the way to the big time. The autobiographical musical is winning and entertaining. Its message is: “Look at us…we did it! And so can you! Follow your dreams because anything is possible!” Again—it is a clever idea. The creators have made a musical with four unknown actors and no budget about four unknown actors making a musical with no budget.

Hmmm….these two projects, each in a different medium, have virtually identical plots. What is going on here?

After leaving [title of show], I turned to my Mom and asked her what she thought about this coincidence, and what she said, I think, is absolutely right. She said that these two projects show how reality TV has cross-pollinated with (or infiltrated, if you prefer) “serious” art. Both of these projects are definitely many cuts above reality TV. But their appeal and the appeal of reality TV have similar sources: spontaneity (the dialogue in Baghead was mostly improvised, as is reality TV, of course), authenticity (the unknown actors in each story are played not by Tom Cruise but by actual and authentic unknown actors), and real-life success (both projects, each with virtually no budget and created by virtual unknowns, made it all the way to your mass eyeballs!)

So the question remains: in this day and age is it possible to write your own ticket? Thanks to reality TV, the answer is yes! But only if you write a [insert media] about yourself and three friends writing a [insert media]. Otherwise, you're sh*t out of luck and “we’ll have to get Tom Cruise on board to make this thing fly. But thanks for playing and we really love the screenplay…”